A COUNTRY PILE

There is always a giddy excitement when one explores items that have emerged from attics and outbuildings in grand houses. A cache of Turkoman torba (woven storage bags to the uninitiated) had remained, relatively forgotten in a large attic chest and had been rediscovered by the family in a reorganization of the home. The collection had evaded the usual moth onslaught. With the exception of a few examples it remained largely in bright condition with original tassels, coloured fringes and flatwoven backs intact.

When Chorley’s were called for a valuation, our specialist Werner Freundel recognized a potential Salor torba but there were niggling doubts. A carpet specialist can go a lifetime without seeing a Salor pass through their saleroom and the ‘too good to be true’ rule seemed to apply. However, after consulting with greater authorities on Turkmen trappings it was agreed – the Salor was truly the needle in the haystack for most rug specialists.

Identification

A great many global auction houses assign the umbrella term of Bokhara, Turkmen or Turkoman to most rugs that have an all-over red tonality with a design of repeating geometric motifs (guls). The mostly larger carpets with bold so-called ‘Elephant foot’ guls are assigned to Afghan weavers.

There is some crude method in this. Turkoman rugs, carpets and trappings do, for the most part, have a roughly very distinctive design methodology to the untrained eye – even across various tribes and centuries. In more recent history, the main trading centre for rugs was the Uzbek city of Bukhara. From there came the eponymous rug identification used by most, for everything from distinctive antique tribal rugs to more modern copies woven to buyers’ specifications and stripped of their nomadic size and function to suit global interior design requirements. It is certain that no nomadic tribe ever had the need for a long narrow runner, whereas the British needed a profusion of these for their myriad narrow hallways in Victorian terraced houses.

Even a cursory exploration of the multitude of Turkoman rug designs shows very distinctive patterns for each tribal community and guls and patterns are often ascribed to certain tribes. Frustratingly, those very distinctive guls are often borrowed and Salor guls are found in Tekke and Saryk rugs, Chuval guls are used by the Yomut as well as the Tekke. The gul is not a sure-fire method of identification.

A Tekke chuval using a Salor main gul (left) and a Tekke rug with a Tekke main gul (right)

For the most part, Turkoman weavings were tribal and the suited to the lifestyle and functional requirements of a nomadic life. The ‘main’ carpet was the central carpet of the tent, the Ensi an entrance rug, chuval and torba bags with kilim backs hung either on camels for transport or in tents for storage. Further categories of rugs and trappings exist, from spindle bags to bridal trappings and door panels with a profusion of designs.

Rise and Fall

During the 16^th and 17^th centuries, while the Chodor tribe was dominant in the North, the Salor tribe were the southern tribal powerhouse (or tent). In the 18^th and 19^th century the Tekke and Yomut tribes were in the ascendancy. From the 1860s onwards, Russia made incursions into Turkmenistan and in 1881 the British Lt. Col. C.E. Stuart estimated the number of Salor ‘tents’ to be a mere 5000 (with an assumed 5 people per tent this meant that only 25,000 Salor remained).

Having once been one of the more powerful tribes, the Salor were heavily defeated in battle with the ruling Persian Qajars in the early 19^th century, again by the Tekke and Saryk and eventually settled in a smaller numbers in the Sarakhs Oasis.

As such, Salor rugs and trappings are among the most rare of Turkmen tribal weavings and fine pieces are for the most part early examples.

The Chorley’s Torba

A Salor torba, West Turkestan, first half 19th Century

SOLD FOR £28,000 (plus fees) 

Wedding trappings were often more sumptuous, as they were often woven as part of a dowry. The Chorley’s Salor torba exhibits several indicators of a wedding trapping. The inclusion of lac dyed silk in the Kejebe ‘arches’ and medallion and the very fact that the Kejebe design was used.

The Kejebe was a tall covered litter atop a camel in which the bride was brought to the groom’s camp.

A Kejebe bridal litter atop a Camel with Asmalyk weavings hung to the sides

She was then placed in a ceremonial tent and further ceremonial traditions ensued. In the above image we can see further wedding trappings – a white ground asmalyk, which was often associated with bridal ceremonies and woven in pairs.

The sequence of arched designs (known as Kejebe) that are seen in the Chorley’s torba, each seem to each enclose an abstracted figure with feet and white detailed ‘hands’.

One might conjecture that the figure is that of the bride and aside potentially the connected tent that of the groom but in fact, the symmetrically arranged arches (or ‘gates’) contain guardian figures that separate the ‘Seljuk’ star medallion and the four gates of the Turkmen universe.

The Kejebe motif was not restricted to the Salor. A later Saryk torba from the same collection uses the same motif – albeit without the central medallion.

The Kejebe pattern of the Chorley's Salor Torba

A part silk Saryk torba with a Kejebe pattern

SOLD FOR £8,500 (plus fees) 

‘The central medallion of scalloped rosettes, with large areas of corroded magenta silk pile, show a ‘Holbein’ endless knot interlace surrounded by guardian figures, contained within eightpointed ‘Seljuk’ stars with cut-off sides. It echoes the outlines and structure of the Salor tribal göl. The so-called darvaza (gates) design is said by Elena Tsareva to represent a deeply meaningful cosmological image, in which the large eight-pointed ‘Seljuk’ star, composed of a square (symbol of the earth) and a diamond (symbol of the cosmos) can be interpreted as a ‘perfect island’, paradise, or the home of the ancestors, while the four flanking arches depict the four gates of the Turkmen universe, with one of its four guardians within each arch’ (Turkmen Carpets, The Neville Kingston Collection, 2016, p.30) (see: Daniel Schaffer ‘A Salor Turkmen Kejebe Trapping’, Hali 198, March 2019)

An unmistakably exciting discovery, unpublished and in private hands since at least the early 20^th century – this Salor turned some heads – it certainly did ours.

Explore Chorley's March Auction including a collection of rugs and carpets